Sermon 3-28-21 (following the Passion Narrative – Mark 14:1-15:47)
Rev. Mark Sloss

We started today by waving our green branches or our cloaks and
joining our voices in a chorus of Hosanna, a word that means ‘save us.’
Though it may not appear so on the surface, the story we just told
together is a story of salvation. I invite you to just let it resonate within
you. It’s not only a story about Jesus, or a story about events that
happened some 2000 years ago. It’s also our story.

I want to briefly share some thoughts and questions that I’ve had this
week about this particular telling of the story. At Jesus arrest when all
the disciples run off and desert him Mark includes the scene of a young
man being grabbed, who leaves his linen cloth behind and runs off
naked. Some have speculated that this is an autobiographical
component of the story. But I wonder whether Mark meant to
communicate that we can’t hide from the naked reality that we too are
among those who desert Jesus?

We too were part of the crowd shouting crucify him. We too were
numbered among the soldiers who mocked and ridiculed him… The
Equal Justice Initiative released a document in 2017 titled “Lynching in
America.” It reported how, in many cases, lynching in America from
1877 to 1950 took the form of public spectacle, “festive community
gatherings” in which “large crowds of whites watched and participated
in the Black victims’ prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment,
and burning at the stake.” It’s not that big of a jump back to this
lynching tree and the ridicule and deriding directed at Jesus from Pilate,
soldiers, and the crowd. They even sarcastically dressed him up and
hailed him as the king of the Jews.

So I wonder how we should hear the words of the Roman centurion at
the point of Jesus death? Might they be a continuation of the sarcastic
derision from the soldiers and Pilate rather than a declaration of Jesus’
true identity: “Truly, this man was God’s Son!” I’ve always thought it
was the later, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps it was both.

There’s mystery in this story. It’s a story that can save us from
ourselves. It’s a story that reveals to us our culpability in scapegoating
and violence toward others. It’s a story in which we’re both deriders
and the derided. We do the betraying, the denying, the deriding, and in
solidarity with Jesus we are the ones forsaken, ridiculed and tortured
unto death.

So one last question: If we are the body of Christ today, how might we
enter into an embodied solidarity with all the marginalized and
persecuted people in our world today? How might this story fill us with
courage to love as Jesus loved, with a love that transforms our world?
And as we ponder that, we keep in mind that Jesus’ dying on the cross
is not the end of this story.

AMEN